Jonathan R Shaw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He has a proud track record in introducing the Bill that became the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. The authority is prosecuting where migrant and mobile workers and workers are being exploited. We have the legislation and a series of safeguards, but if hon. Members are aware of any cases, they should bring them to the authority's attention. I have met its representatives, who have prosecuted where they have found such cases and will continue to do so.

Climate Change

Nicholas Winterton: Does the Secretary of State accept that the UK livestock industry makes a huge contribution to not only the quality but the security of the food supply in this country? It is also true that cattle are a major generator of methane gas. Is it not important, however, to keep this matter in balance, and to say to anyone who criticises the farming industry that the contribution of the livestock industry far outweighs any contribution that it might make to climate change?

Hilary Benn: We are using both those approaches. The right hon. Gentleman, who is expert in these matters, is correct that the gamma interferon test produces more positive results. My view is that we should use all the scientific tools at our disposal to try to identify the nature of the problem. I think I am right in saying that there are a couple of potential court cases relating to use of the gamma interferon test, which will be a matter for the courts to resolve. Both tests demonstrate that there is a problem and we have to deal with it. The question is finding the solution that is going to work. A number of different proposals have been made and I look forward with great interest to what the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which the right hon. Gentleman so ably chairs, has to say when it produces its report.

James Paice: The issue of the use of gamma interferon goes further than the Secretary of State suggests. The gamma interferon test has a sensitivity of about 97 per cent., yet we have found that in some herds up to 28 times the number of cattle are reacting to it as to the skin test. His officials are flatly refusing farmers the opportunity of re-testing and insisting on culling all those animals. That is the reason for the court hearings to which he referred.
	Why will the Secretary of State not instruct his officials to allow a re-test, on the understanding that everybody accepts the outcome? All the evidence is that those results are statistically invalid. Speak to experts: they are all saying that we could not get such a difference in sensitivity between the two tests. Something is wrong somewhere, and putting farmers to the expense of going to court—risking the Secretary of State's money on extra compensatory costs, as well as defending the case—is helping nobody at all.

Hilary Benn: I know how much the hon. Gentleman's constituents have been affected. Although the flooding in Tewkesbury was mercifully not as bad as it was last summer, we were all waiting with bated breath to see what happened.
	The main point about investment in flood defence and regional figures is that the figures may go up or down from year to year depending on the nature of the projects being funded. When a big capital investment project in a region in one year is finished and the money has been spent, the figure in the following year may not be as large. The trend line is clear, however. It is not possible to increase the budget, as we have, from £300 million to £600 million over a decade, and to be committed to increasing it to £800 million by 2010-11, without the trend line rising. There will be such ebbs and flows, but the overall trend is up, which means—as I said a moment ago—that we will be able to flood the additional flood defence works that we all want.

Joan Ruddock: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, not least for the advertisement for the "act on CO2 calculator", which is available in Portcullis House until 5 o'clock today for Members to test their carbon footprints.
	As for making such material available, where it is on the internet it is accessible to everybody. Therefore, constituents in Scotland will have had the opportunity to access it, and all Members could publicise it. Also, there is press advertising, which is of course seen in the devolved Administration areas. We have spoken to our colleagues in the devolved Administrations. This material is extremely important, as more than 40 per cent. of our emissions are down to our individual actions, and we have suggested that it may be made available for public engagement in the devolved areas. If the devolved Administrations are willing to contribute to, and participate in, these schemes, we would be delighted to co-operate with them and make our expertise available.

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman will have seen the speech that the Prime Minister made in November. The target of at least 60 per cent. was set in the light of royal commission advice, but the Prime Minister has acknowledged, as we all do, that the science is evolving—we read the reports—and that is why he said that it is now felt that the reduction might need to be increased to 80 per cent. That is also why we will ask the Committee on Climate Change, as one of its first tasks under its new chair, to advise on what the 2050 figure should be. To make a point that relates to a number of issues to do with the Bill, having established this important, authoritative and influential body, we should let it do its job and give us the advice, so that the Government can then take the final decision on what to do.

Joan Ruddock: My right hon. Friend raises a good point. The RSA is a valuable body in this respect and it is involved in doing work on personal carbon trading allowances. The Department is keen to receive the results of the RSA's work, and we are pioneering work to see whether there is cost-benefit in having personal carbon trading allowances and whether there would be public acceptability. This is all in its early stages, but in addition we are providing £8.5 million-worth of grants to local communities, and 83 community projects have been established, which are very much in line with what the RSA and the Co-operative party have advocated: that we should enable communities to take action to reduce emissions at community level.

David Heathcoat-Amory: What is the Department doing to counter light pollution? If one flies over southern England at night, one finds the place ablaze with unnecessary lighting, which is not only very wasteful but it prevents people from seeing properly dark skies. I say that as chairman of the all-party group on astronomy. What are Ministers doing to counter the threat—and, indeed the reality—of light pollution, because, after all, the skies are the largest part of the environment, for which the Department is responsible?

David Amess: My mother will be a beneficiary of the splendid idea to award medals for land army girls. Now that the forms have been issued, will the Minister or the Secretary of State share with the House how vigorously the information will be interpreted, given that these ladies are of mature years and their sight, hearing and memory is not exactly what it was 60 years ago?

Hilary Benn: I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman's mother will be one of the recipients of the badge. May I say that all of us, as Members of the House, have a part to play in ensuring that the information gets out? Here is a little advert: 08459 33 55 77 is the phone number people should call to get an application form—they can also get one from the website. I absolutely take the point that he raises, because I want to get the badge to all the surviving members of the women's land army, who did so much for the country. They fought in the fields and in the forests to ensure that we were capable of winning the war. We owe them a big debt of gratitude, and the badge will be a sign of a grateful nation.

Harriet Harman: The provisional business for the week commencing 4 February will be:
	Monday 4 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports.
	Tuesday 5 February—Debate on the treaty of Lisbon provisions relating to human rights, followed by continuation of consideration in Committee of the European Union (Amendment) Bill [3rd Allotted Day]—Any selected amendments to clause 2 relating to human rights. Followed by motion to approve a local government restructuring order relating to Wiltshire.
	Wednesday 6 February—Debate on the treaty of Lisbon provisions relating to the Single Market. Followed by continuation of consideration in Committee of the European Union (Amendment) Bill [4th Allotted Day]—any selected amendments to clause 2 relating to the single market.
	Thursday 7 February—Topical debate. Subject to be announced, followed by motions relating to European scrutiny reform.
	The provisional business for the week commencing 18 February will include:
	Monday 18 February—Remaining stages of the Health and Social Care Bill.
	Tuesday 19 February—Debate on the treaty of Lisbon provisions relating to foreign, security and defence policy. Followed by continuation of consideration in committee of the European Union (Amendment) Bill [5th allotted day]—any selected amendments to clause 2 relating to foreign, security and defence policy. Followed by motion to approve a local government restructuring order relating to Shropshire.
	Wednesday 20 February—Debate on the treaty of Lisbon provisions relating to international development. Followed by continuation of consideration in committee of the European Union (Amendment) Bill [6th( )allotted day]—any selected amendments to clause 2 relating to international development.
	Thursday 21 February—Topical debate: subject to be announced. Followed by motion to approve a statutory instrument on control orders. Followed by motions relating to the draft Social Security Benefits Up-Rating Order 2008 and the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2008.
	Friday 22 February—Private Members' Bills.
	I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for February will be:
	Thursday 7 February—A debate on the report from the Transport Committee on novice drivers.
	Thursday 21 February—A debate on the report from the Health Committee on the electronic patient record.
	Thursday 28 February—A debate on the report from the Communities and Local Government Committee on refuse collection.
	Today, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the next Budget will be on 12 March.
	On behalf of the whole House, I wish to extend my warmest congratulations to Jill Pay on her appointment as the new Serjeant at Arms. Our men in tights are now to be led by a woman in tights.

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Lady mentioned pension liabilities, but failed to make a point about pension fund assets. The most important issue for pension funds is the strength of the economy. That is why sustained low inflation, low interest rates and growth in the economy are the most important issues for pensions in the future.
	I take it that the right hon. Lady has made a representation for a topical debate on midwives and NHS staffing. She will know that the issue was debated in Westminster Hall yesterday, and she will bear it in mind that because of increasing investment in the health service and the increasing recruitment of midwives more midwives are going into training than ever before. Those measures are part of our determination to increase the quality of maternity services.
	The right hon. Lady mentioned business men and women. She is right, of course, that we need to do everything we can to encourage more women in commerce. Further work is coming out of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to support women. If we compare our economy with the American economy, we see that our competitiveness gap is accounted for by the fact that we have fewer women who start and run their own businesses. We must make progress on that, but I find it a bit much that the shadow Leader of the House—one of only 17 Tory women Members of Parliament who have never done anything to champion women's rights—should try to tell us what to do, when we have championed women's rights over the years.
	The right hon. Lady mentioned the Defence Committee. Training is not inadequate. The housing provided for our armed forces certainly needs to be improved, and we have made progress in that respect against the background of the spending cuts made by the previous Administration.
	The question of mixed-sex wards is always a matter of concern. The shadow Leader of the House will know that the amount of single-sex accommodation provided has increased, which has ensured that all patients have access to single-sex toilet and bathroom facilities.
	The right hon. Lady mentioned the NAO report on community sentences. The Government welcome the report's findings, which show that there has been more enforcement when people breach community sentences, and that more community sentences and drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses are being completed than previously. All that is to be welcomed, and I congratulate probation services on their important work in ensuring that strict community sentences are properly enforced. People who serve such sentences are much less likely to reoffend than those who go to prison.
	The right hon. Lady asked about primary schools in rural areas, and she also mentioned secondary schools. She will know—

Harriet Harman: The way in which the House deals with the important issue of local government restructuring orders takes account of the approach taken by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are taking on the Floor of the House next week and the week after the House returns from the recess two issues in relation to two counties.
	On the procedure for dealing with treaties, we have a Bill that enacts a treaty and we have sought in the latest Bill to give as much time as possible to deal—[Hon. Members: "Not enough."] Hon. Members say, "Not enough", but we have afforded the Committee stage of that Bill more days of debate than were afforded to the Nice treaty, the Amsterdam treaty and the European— [Interruption.]

George Young: The Leader of the House has announced motions for debate next Thursday relating to European scrutiny reform. Is she aware that this morning, the Liaison Committee discussed those proposals and registered deep anxiety at aspects of them? Will she now respect the Liaison Committee's request that next Thursday those motions be not moved?

George Young: My Committee's report, which forms the basis for this debate, was published at 11 o'clock on Monday. The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Derek Conway), the subject of the report, came to the House that afternoon to make his personal statement. He said that he accepted our criticisms in full and unreservedly apologised. That prompt admission, which I welcome, will hopefully enable the House to agree to the three-paragraph motion on the Order Paper.
	This report on the hon. Gentleman's conduct has evoked considerable interest and comment both inside and outside the House. Some of the comment has related to the fact that the hon. Gentleman had previously employed his elder son as a research assistant. The complaint from Mr. Barnbrook related to the employment of the hon. Gentleman's younger son, and the commissioner's investigation focused solely on that. Complaints have now been made to the commissioner about the employment of his elder son; under our rules, those complaints fall to the commissioner to consider.
	In the past few days, my Committee has been accused of being both a kangaroo court and a gentleman's club. In my view, both accusations are wide of the mark. At the heart of our system for dealing with complaints such as this one is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards—an independent officer, appointed by the House, who investigates specific complaints about Members' conduct. Before submitting a report to the Committee, the commissioner shares the factual sections of that report with the Member who is the subject of the complaint and makes any mutually agreed factual corrections. Having received the commissioner's report, the Committee shares it in its entirety, including the commissioner's conclusions, with the Member concerned, and invites his or her observations—written, oral or both. It does so before it enters into any consideration of the commissioner's report. Before the Committee reaches its conclusions, any evidence that the Member gives is carefully weighed alongside the commissioner's report and any other evidence.
	Having chaired the Committee since 2001, I can testify to the fact that the Committee approaches the task of judging colleagues conscientiously and in an entirely non-partisan way. We strive to be fair to the House, which has asked us to enforce its rules, and we strive to be fair to the Member before us and to the public interest. In this case, as in all the others that I have brought to the House, our recommendations were unanimous. All 10 members of the Committee took part in the proceedings, and I am grateful to them for the way in which they handled this case.
	As the record shows, the Committee has made tough recommendations to the House when, as in this case, they are justified. To those who say that the punishments that the House imposes on those who break its rules are disproportionately light, I would only add that, as this case and others before it have demonstrated, the reputational consequences of our reports can be fatal. I therefore reject any suggestion that the Committee is either a kangaroo court or a gentleman's club. Our procedures are fair and transparent, and our judgments can have serious and far-reaching consequences for those who have breached the rules. Both the commissioner and the Committee approached this case just as they would any other. The hon. Gentleman has acknowledged the courtesy with which the commissioner treated him and has acknowledged that the Committee offered him every opportunity to explain his position.
	As the Leader of the House said, this was the last case reported on by the previous commissioner, Sir Philip Mawer, and I thank him once again for his characteristically thorough examination of this matter and clear recommendations to the Committee. His report speaks for itself.
	At the heart of this case was whether Freddie Conway was appropriately remunerated for the tasks that he was required to perform, and whether the work was actually carried out. The commissioner concluded that Freddie's rate of pay was unjustifiably high given his qualifications and experience, and that, on the balance of probabilities, he did not need consistently to work his full contracted hours to complete his work. The commissioner also found that bonus payments had been made in excess of the permitted levels. My Committee endorsed those conclusions. Given some of the press comment, however, I should stress that neither the commissioner nor the Committee asserts that Freddie Conway did no work for his father.
	A difficulty for the commissioner and my Committee in this case has been the virtually complete absence of evidence of the work that Freddie Conway actually performed, not least when he was at university in Newcastle. The Committee made it clear that it was not for the hon. Gentleman to establish his innocence, but frankly we were astonished that after three years and a substantial amount of expenditure, there was no independent evidence of Freddie's output—nor, apparently, could anyone outside the family be found who had seen him working. As the Committee commented on a case in 2004,
	"It is...Members' responsibility to ensure that, if requested, they can properly justify any use of voted money, in the same way as any other recipient."
	The hon. Gentleman has admitted that he failed to keep adequate records, and has apologised for his failure to do so. It is also common ground that bonus payments were made that exceeded the authorised ceiling.
	What was the hon. Gentleman's defence to the commissioner's conclusions about the level of his son's salary? In essence, he consistently maintained that, as his son's salary was within the Department of Resources' approved scale, he was entitled to set it at his discretion. The Committee rejected that argument. The salary scale, at the time of the original appointment, ranged from £12,184 to £29,353. Given the extent of that range, the Committee did not believe, as a matter of principle, that Members' discretion could be regarded as completely unfettered. A judgment is clearly called for.
	The question that we had to address was whether the hon. Gentleman had exercised his judgment sufficiently unreasonably for the payments to constitute improper use of the staffing allowance. The Committee concluded that it did. Freddie Conway was just 19, had just left school following his A-levels and had no experience. Department of Finance and Administration guidance would have suggested a salary at, or close to, the recommended London entry point of £16,614 full-time. Yet Freddie's father, by his own admission, took no account of that, and paid him the full-time equivalent of £25,970. The Committee took the view that that was an improper use of the allowance.
	Taking all this together, the Committee has made three recommendations that it is asking the House to approve today. The first is that the hon. Gentleman reimburse the House for the sums overpaid to his son by way of bonus. That is the recommendation in paragraph 33 of the report. The second, set out in paragraph 34, is that the hon. Gentleman reimburse the House £6,000 in recognition of the over-generous salary paid to his son. The Committee considered that, whatever other action the House took, some recompense for the sum improperly paid out would be appropriate. For the reasons set out in paragraph 34 of the report, it proposes a payment of £6,000 by the hon. Gentleman in recognition of that. Finally, in recognition of the overall seriousness of this case, the Committee recommends that the hon. Gentleman be suspended from the service of the House for 10 sitting days.
	There are two other matters on which I wish to touch briefly before I conclude. The first is the speculation that the Committee or the House should refer this matter to the police for investigation. As the House will know, Members of Parliament enjoy no general immunity from the criminal law; anyone can refer a matter to the police for investigation at any time, if they have evidence to suggest that a criminal offence has been committed. Both the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and my Committee consider, if necessary after taking legal advice, whether there is sufficient evidence to justify our doing so in any particular case in the light of all the relevant facts. On the other hand, there is no reason, as I am sure the House will agree, for either the Committee or the commissioner to adopt automatically a presumption that a Member who is the subject of a complaint may have committed a criminal offence. The Committee was satisfied on all the evidence before it that reporting to the House, rather than referral to the police, was the right way forward in this case.
	The second matter is whether Members should continue to be permitted to employ relatives, or others with whom they have other than an arm's length relationship. At this point, I say to the House—and, indeed, to all the newspapers who have been ringing up since Monday—that I employ a member of my family, who is remunerated out of my parliamentary allowance. That is a debate for another day, along with a debate about what steps the House needs to take to address the reputational damage that this case has done.
	In the meantime, I just say to the House that Members' use of allowances is a perennially sensitive issue and that allegations of real or perceived misuse are damaging. This is money that our constituents have paid for through their taxes. It is important that Members can demonstrate robustly, if challenged, that their use of allowances is above reproach, particularly where they have a relationship with the employee that might suggest an element of personal benefit. We should set ourselves similar requirements to those that we would expect of others responsible for the expenditure of public money, as a predecessor Committee suggested in 2003. The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup has paid the price for overlooking that principle. I commend the motion to the House.

Theresa May: As the Leader of the House made clear, this matter comes before us following the investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Standards and Privileges Committee. I join her in thanking the former parliamentary commissioner for his work. I also thank the members of the Committee for their work, which they carry out diligently on behalf of this House and in the best interests of this House.
	I endorse the recommendations made by the Standards and Privileges Committee and support the motion tabled by the Leader of the House. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) described in some detail the Committee's recommendations and said a little about its investigations. It did indeed find that the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Derek Conway) had "misused the Staffing Allowance" and
	"also seemed to be oblivious to the broader reputational risks to the House of any perception of personal benefit to his family."
	All Members of this House should remember that in using public funds we have a duty to ensure that we use those funds properly and within the rules set. The Committee's report also makes it clear how important it is for Members to recognise the impact of the behaviour of an individual Member on the reputation not only of MPs or politicians generally but on the reputation of this House. As the Committee said,
	"Members' use of allowances is a perennially sensitive issue, and allegations of real or perceived misuse risk damage to the reputation of the House as an institution, as well as to the personal reputation of individual Members."
	Our behaviour, how we conduct ourselves, and how we use public money do not matter only for us as individuals or for political parties; they matter because they affect the views that people have of this institution. It behoves all of us to remember that in all that we do, we carry not just our own reputations but the reputation of this House. I support the motion.

David Winnick: It is a difficult matter for a Committee to pass judgment on a fellow Member, even more so in cases where the Member belongs to the same political party as oneself. The Committee has carried out its work with the usual integrity that we expect, and we are grateful for its report. I have no criticism whatsoever of the manner in which it set about its work.
	This case understandably gives rise to concerns about how our expenses are claimed. Perhaps some hon. Members will feel that the criticism being voiced in the press is without any reason or justification, and that the media misunderstand all about our expenses. We are not crooks; we are honest, and when someone makes claims unfairly and breaks the rules, we see what happens. Indeed, we would not want to go through what the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Derek Conway) rightly went through on Monday. Whether there should be a more severe punishment, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, is a matter of opinion.
	The process is lacking at the moment, in that there is insufficient transparency. Yes, money is claimed for perfectly legitimate reasons; I have no doubts about that. But that is not the view of the public. It may be that there is a lack of understanding on the part of the public about what expenses are for. I have said previously that I do not pay expenses to my secretary; I pay her a salary, and I do the same for my assistant in the constituency office. Nevertheless, the question arises whether there is a better way of ensuring that the public can to some extent be satisfied that the money that can be claimed, which is a very large sum—more than £144,000 excluding travel expenses—is spent in the manner that we would expect of other organisations. We expect those bodies to have the transparency and control that we, perhaps, do not.
	We are constantly preaching to other organisations about how important it is for proper controls to be in place where public money is concerned—but that practice seems to be lacking on our own part. The situation is even more annoying, because we are honest. We claim money that we believe to be absolutely essential in the carrying out of our parliamentary duties. I do not know whether everyone does, but I welcome the fact that each year the amount claimed is published—a state of affairs that arises from the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It would be appalling if we did otherwise.
	However, questions have been raised. For example, the Senior Salaries Review Body has suggested that the National Audit Office should take a random sample of a number of claims. I know that that idea is being looked into, but why should that not happen? What possible criticism could we have of that idea if we are claiming money properly and legitimately according to the rules, as we say we are? Why should the NAO not be involved? I do not understand why there should be any reluctance on our part about that.
	I do not employ any of my relatives, but I see no reason why there should be a ban on a partner or a relative being employed, as long as everything is above board—as, in the unfortunate case we are discussing at the moment, it was not. I am against such a ban, but would it not be right, without going to extremes, to say that any partner or relative employed should be listed in the Register of Members' Interests? If the arrangement is above board, it is nothing to be ashamed about. If X employs his or her partner, it would be revealed in the register. I do not see why that should be a problem.
	I shall conclude on this note. I do not altogether agree with the assertion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead that our reputation is at rock bottom. That could have been said for centuries. Much of the criticism of our work is wrong and misplaced. However, it is in our own interest and for the good of our reputation that the manner in which we claim public money be shown to be transparent and justified, and the necessary controls be in place. I am not satisfied that they currently are, and I hope that this case means that changes and reforms that help the reputation of the House of Commons will take place.

Stewart Hosie: I have had the great privilege of sharing platforms with several holocaust survivors. Sadly, their numbers are dwindling; age is catching up with all of them. The Minister is right that their voices must continue to be heard. What might the Government be able to do in future when no one is left who has first-hand experience of the horror of the second world war?

Bob Spink: The Under-Secretary talks about lessons being learned. Does he accept that events in the world show that lessons have not been learned? The raison d'être of holocaust memorial day is learning lessons about genocide. Yet actions are taking place throughout the world, such as in Burma, against ethnic groups. Does he believe that the international community, including this country and the United Nations, should lead the world in tackling the repression and genocide that continue to happen?

Parmjit Dhanda: The purpose of Holocaust memorial day is to learn and embed those lessons to make a difference for the future. As the hon. Gentleman says, we should learn the lessons for the future from man's inhumanity to man.
	With that in mind, the UK joined the Swedish and United States Governments in 1998 in establishing the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. In January 2000, 44 Governments from around the world attended the Stockholm international forum on holocaust education, remembrance and research. All those present signed the Stockholm declaration. The principles agreed that day have since been adapted to form the statement of commitment that underpins our own holocaust memorial day commemoration.
	This is probably an appropriate time for me to pay tribute to the work done by our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to ensure that holocaust memorial day happened and to make the long-term commitment to it. He not only helped to bring in the commemoration, but made a commitment to ensure that it would last into the future.

Parmjit Dhanda: My hon. Friend is entirely right. Many of us in the House will have had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz with children from our local schools. I know that such visits have made a huge difference to the children around the country who have had the opportunity to see at first hand what happened in such places. The work of the trust is incredibly important, which is why we are backing it to the tune of about £1.5 million.
	The date for this important commemoration, 27 January, was chosen because it is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is a powerful symbol of the horrors of the holocaust. We promote the UK holocaust memorial day at international and national levels and increasingly, as the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said, at local level.
	Through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, we work closely with our European and international partners to promote holocaust education and research. My Department, the Department for Communities and Local Government, provides £500,000 of annual core funding for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. This supports not only the holding of an annual national commemoration, but many of the local community activities. Five hundred local events have been held, and 23,000 people have already lit the virtual candle on the trust's website. Many hundreds of us, if not more, were in Hope street in Liverpool to light a candle on Sunday as well. The importance of actively engaging young people has already been pointed out, and as I have said, the Government provide £1.5 million of annual funding for the Holocaust Educational Trust to support the participation of two pupils from every school and college in visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
	I want to touch on last Sunday's national commemoration in Liverpool, which I had the privilege to attend, and which rightly included the experiences of those who had suffered persecution more recently, in the conflicts in Rwanda, Darfur and the former Yugoslavia. In addition to the national commemoration, the Liverpool organisers also succeeded in running an important series of events during the preceding fortnight. Those activities were hosted by local communities originating from as far afield as Chad, the Czech Republic, Darfur, Kosovo and Rwanda. I am sure that I have the backing of the whole House in commending Liverpool—the European city of culture—and, indeed, all the other cities and towns across the UK for their commitment to actively engaging their local communities and schools in marking this year's holocaust memorial day. That is what holocaust memorial day is, and should be, all about.
	In Liverpool, on Sunday, I had the privilege of sitting next to a gentleman whom I had never met before. His name was Martin Stern, and he had an extraordinary story to tell. He was born in the Netherlands in 1938. His father was a Jewish architect, whom his non-Jewish mother had married despite the Nazi Nuremberg laws. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, his father had hidden with the Dutch resistance. His father was captured, however, and sent first to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald, where he was killed. By this time, Martin was about five years old. He had a younger sister, but after she was born, his mother died from a hospital infection.
	Martin Stern was taken in by a young Dutch couple, but they were soon arrested because Martin and his sister had been born of a Jewish parent. As a result, he was sent to the transit camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands and, later, with his one-year-old sister, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. He and his sister—a five-year-old and a one-year-old—were among the 150 children at the camp. I learned from Martin at the weekend that about 15,000 children entered concentration camps during the second world war. He is one of about 100 who survived that experience.
	Martin Stern and his younger sister were protected by a young woman in the concentration camp. She became like a mother to them, although when they were released, she was not allowed to look after them. He was reunited with her in the 1980s, and saw her before she passed away.
	The time that I spent talking to Martin before the commemoration provided me with the beginning of an understanding of what it must have been like to have experienced the horrors of the holocaust. Despite having had that experience, Martin had the resolve to make a new life in this country, and to become an eminent doctor here. His story, and those of others like him, must never be forgotten.

Paul Goodman: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar) on the part that he has played in ensuring that this topical debate could take place today. I should also like to say that the Minister's opening speech struck exactly the right note. Parts of it—the ending, in particular—were extremely moving.
	I have a personal interest in this debate, in a way, in that my family background is Jewish, although it is not the religion that I, in a flawed and faltering way, try to practise. I was not present at Liverpool on Sunday, but my colleague, Baroness Warsi, the shadow Minister for Community Cohesion, was, as was my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who I see in his place; he was representing the leader of the Conservative party. I have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau and I have read some of the standard works on the holocaust. Although my family did not lose any of its members during the holocaust, I remember my father telling me when I was a child that his father bought a gun in the early part of the war—they were easier to get hold of then than they are now—with the intention of shooting the entire family if the Germans landed. I reflect that if things had been different, I might not be here today, although that consideration is not unique to me, as it applies to other hon. Members.
	Reflecting on the holocaust, it is hard to comprehend—I am sure that hon. Members will share this view—the sheer scale of what happened. It was the worst act of state terrorism that has ever taken place in western Europe. It is also hard to grasp that this act took place in Europe. Those of us who are Europeans—all of us present today are Europeans—find it extremely difficult to grasp that this happened in our continent, which we like to think of as one of the centres of civilisation. It is the continent of Goethe, Mozart and Kant.

Paul Goodman: I am sure that the hon. Lady is right. I was going to ask the Minister about that. According to my research, a document produced by the Department for Children, Schools and Families referred to one teacher in a school in northern England who had allegedly backed off from teaching the holocaust because of the reaction that, rightly or wrongly, they thought they would get from Muslim pupils. Perhaps the Minister can clear that up later.
	While discussing holocaust memorial day, I wanted to make passing reference to the Muslim Council of Britain, of which both the Government and, for the Conservatives, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones have in some respects been critical. The MCB this year decided to attend Holocaust memorial day, having boycotted it for many years. It is right to give credit where it is due—it has finally decided to attend.
	In relation to keeping Holocaust memorial day alive, I want to press the Minister a little on anti-Semitism in Britain today in universities and schools. It is a sobering thought that the Government are paying capital costs for school security in, I believe, 12 local authority areas. That is a reminder that the terrible legacy of anti-Semitism, demonstrated in the holocaust, is not, I am afraid, entirely gone.
	I want to ask the Minister three questions. First, the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government have a hate crime taskforce, which is reviewing evidence of campus anti-Semitism. Has that taskforce had an opportunity to report? If not, when will it do so? Secondly, there is a long-standing difficulty about British citizens, or at least people living in Britain, contributing to USA-based anti-Semitic websites. I understand that a prosecution may be due. If the Minister can give any news on that, I think the House would be grateful.
	Thirdly, the Government are committed to recording different hate crimes. In a Westminster Hall debate—initiated, I think, by the all-party group—a Minister gave that commitment, but apparently only one in 10 recent anti-Semitic hate crimes has led to prosecution. That is a low proportion. Will the Minister comment on what the Government can do to raise the success rate?
	In closing, I looked to the account of what happened in Liverpool and found what seemed to be an apposite quote from Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, which marries up the points about past and future that many hon. Members have made today:
	"We can't change the past. But each of us, by challenging prejudice and intolerance, can change the future."
	That is an entirely appropriate thought with which to end my contribution to this topical debate on Holocaust memorial day.

Denis MacShane: We have only one hour for debate. Those on the Front Benches have been very generous in taking interventions. I will not take interventions, simply so that I can sit down as soon as I can. Please wave a yellow or a red card at me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I go over more than four or five minutes.
	This is an important debate and I am glad that the Government have found time for it. Like other Members, I have visited Auschwitz. I was there on the 60th anniversary of the liberation, but I have taken my children on private visits to Poland—to Madjenek—to try to explain to them exactly what the holocaust was. It was unique; it was not another genocide, another extermination. History is littered with those. As the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) said, we face them today, perhaps in Darfur. What is being unleashed in Kenya might also be going in that horrible direction. We hope not.
	The holocaust was four years of calmly organised, purposeful integration of transport, science, engineering and construction work to put millions of Jews, Sinti and Gypsies to death. We are now finding that the death toll may be higher. I want to report to the House the remarkable work of Father Desbois, a Paris-based priest who has spent the past two or three years touring sites in Ukraine that are not recorded, discovering graves the remains of Jews put to death by SS and Wehrmacht Einsatzgruppen after the invasion of Ukraine.
	The holocaust figures may have to be increased a little, which is why we have to say to ourselves that there is no comparison between the holocaust and other horrible moments of European, or indeed world, history—expulsions, ethnic cleansing, population transfers, massacres at the end of the Ottoman empire and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians leaving their homes in the wars of 1947 and 1948.
	Nor can we class the holocaust as just a matter of history. As hon. Members have said, the holocaust was rooted in an ideology—not in hate, race or religious hate, much as those were part of it, but in an ideology called anti-Semitism. It has been said that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. As chairman of the all-party commission of inquiry into anti-Semitism in this country, let me report to the House the fact that this is a light sleeper that is reawakening. Anti-Semitism is one of the ideological driving forces for violence, hate and terror around the world. It is international and coherent; it involves theoreticians and practitioners; its involves men of huge violence while at its soft end it involves a joke around the dinner table, or perhaps a brick hurled through a synagogue window.
	We have to place on record some apostles of contemporary anti-Semitism as the best way of giving witness to our concern about and horror at what happened in the holocaust. Take, for example, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who says:
	"An Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier."
	He goes on:
	"I consider this type of martyrdom operation"—
	blowing up Jews in Israel—
	"as an evidence of God's justice."
	All this was said on the BBC, not hidden away on obscure websites. He also said:
	"Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do".
	This man is an open advocate of Jew killing and of holocaust activities as they have been modernised in contemporary world history.
	A few years back, Mr. Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam at the al-Haram mosque in Mecca, said:
	"Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today...the scum of the human race 'whom Allah turned into apes and pigs'".
	In March 2003, a more senior state figure, President Bashar al-Assad, said:
	"Even if the peace process succeeds, it is impossible that Israel should be a legitimate state".
	Returning home, Mr. David Irving, talking late last year to  The Guardian, said that the Jews were responsible for what happened to them in the second world war and that the "Jewish problem" was responsible for nearly all the wars of the past 100 years:
	"The Jews are the architects of their own misfortune",
	he declared.
	At about the same time, Muhammad Cherif Abbas, Algeria's Minister of War Veterans, said of President Nicolas Sarkozy:
	"You know the origins of the French president and those who put him into power. Do you know that the Israelis printed a stamp with Nicolas Sarkozy on it during the election campaign?...Why has Bernard Kouchner..."—
	the French Foreign Minister, who is a non-believing Jew—
	"decided to cross the floor? It's the result of a movement that reflects the views of the real architects of Sarkozy's arrival in power—the Jewish lobby."
	There we have it again—references to the "Jewish lobby", the cabal. The Saudi Government are publishing translations of the protocols of the elders of Zion and circulating them as contemporary historical material.
	My final remarks—I shall sit down soon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and thank you for that glance—relate to material published by Policy Exchange in a report produced by Professor Denis MacEoin of Newcastle university at the end of last year. The information in question is in circulation in the King Fahad school in west London. It says that the Jews are responsible for trying to
	"immerse nations in vice and the spread of fornication."
	It also says that the Jews are
	"spreading immoral pornographic literature...Cheating, bribing, stealing and conning."
	It goes on to say:
	"The Jews are a people who were moulded with treachery and backstabbing throughout the centuries and they do not keep their word nor honour their promise."
	Finally, let me quote Nick Griffin of the British National party, who is currently obsessed with Polish workers. A few years ago it was Asian workers, but the man has always been obsessed with Jews. He wrote a book called "Who Are The Mindbenders?", which lists Jews who work in the media and do not use their real names. Mr. Griffin denounced the former Labour Member of Parliament for York, Alex Lyon, as
	"this bloody Jew... whose only claim to fame is that two of his parents died in the Holocaust."
	In a book published in 1988, Mr. Griffin wrote:
	"the Jews... shifted the alleged sites of the mass gassings from the no-longer believable German camps such as Dachau and Belsen to the sites in Communist Poland such as Auschwitz and Treblinka."
	I put those quotes on the record so that people who read the debate can understand that what we are dealing with is not history. What we are dealing with is not what happened in the past; it is alive, awake and organising. It involves British citizens. It involves many people from different countries and different faiths. We must combat anti-Semitism today with the dedication with which we so singularly failed to combat anti-Semitism and Nazism before 1939.

Lembit �pik: Although I am not Jewish, my family's history was changed for ever by the momentous and destructive events that engulfed the continent of Europe 65 years ago. The imperative for my parents to flee Estonia under threat of persecution and probable death is the reason I am here. The United Kingdom's generosity and compassion at the time saved my family, and for that I, like so many others, am for ever in this country's debt.
	It is my family's history, and my strong sense of association with humanity as a common community, that made me agree to agree to work with the Holocaust Education Trust to promote the issues that Holocaust memorial day exists to commemorate. I pay particular tribute to Karen Pollock, head of the trust, whoceaselessly, courageously and with extraordinary poise and elegancehas raised its effectiveness to the level that we see today. We all owe her a great debt of gratitude.
	I want to say a little about the Lessons from Auschwitz project, which enables sixth-form students to make one-day visits to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. It gives them a unique insight into the catastrophe that can result when anti-Semitism and other prejudice spirals out of control. Most participants return not just with a deeper understanding of the past, but with a real sense of mission to ensure that such events are never allowed to happen again.
	Last year the Government provided 1.5 million to support that flagship project. It was hard fought for, but the HET is immeasurably grateful for the Government's generous contribution, which has enabled it to expand the project dramatically and take it nationwide. The aim is to make it available to sixth-formers at every secondary school and further education college in the United Kingdom. I hope that this year representatives of all six secondary schools in my constituency will be able to act as ambassadors, and will report their findings to their schools.
	One of the primary aims of the visits is to enhance participants' sense of civic responsibility and encourage them to be active in standing up to all forms of racism and discrimination, not just anti-Semitism. It is mandatory for them to share their experiences and disseminate the lessons that they have learned in their schools and communities on their return. Many of the students who went last year chose to make it a Holocaust memorial day commemorative event, and as a result there has been a considerable increase in the number of young people participating on the day.
	All Members of Parliament are invited to join students from their constituencies on the visits and become involved in their follow-up activities, and I encourage all Members to take advantage of that opportunity. Their involvement helps to inspire young people to become more politically aware and active, as well as underlining the importance of lessons that we, as parliamentarians, are duty bound to promote.

Ian Cawsey: I welcome the debate. I shall try to be brief, as others wish to speak.
	Earlier in the Session I tabled early-day motion 648 to commemorate Holocaust memorial day. I thank all 169 Members in all parts of the House who showed their support by signing it.
	This year's Holocaust memorial day theme was Imagine, remember, reflect and react. On Sunday I attended a local memorial service in Brigg, organised by Brigg town council. The council has an annual ceremony and a permanent memorial in the Angel courtyard, in the council buildings in the market place. This year's event was led by our first-class mayor Mike Doherty and his wife Pat, and was organised by our excellent town clerk, Jeanette Woollard. The ceremony was short, moving and effective, involving people of all ages and different religions. It was an honour and a privilege to participate in it. Along with the mayor and eight schoolchildren, I placed 10 stones around the permanent memorial to commemorate the 10 million people who died at the hands of the Nazis.
	Keeping the memory alive is important, hence the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Education Trust, which is 20 years old this year. They have championed holocaust education in schools, and it has been on the curriculum since 1991. It has been claimed that it will be diminished or removed from the curriculum, and I have seenas, I am sure, have many Memberssome of the e-mails that were sent as part of a campaign to prevent any such move. Their purpose seemed to be to send an anti-Muslim message, attacking Muslims for being somehow responsible.
	Those e-mails, which served as a chilling reminder of how quickly prejudice can spread, ended up in America, in a world so insular that people thought UK stood for University of Kentucky. Representatives of the university had to issue a press statement making it clear that it was nothing to do with them. Indeed, as far as I can see it was nothing to do with anything at all, but it would be good if the Minister reiterated that holocaust education will remain on the curriculum.
	The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) mentioned the Lessons from Auschwitz project and the 1.5 million grant that the Government provided last year, which has allowed the project to expand so that all schools can participate. I hope the Minister will also confirm that such funding will continue.
	Just over a year ago, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the morning, we visited Auschwitz, which was bizarre as it looked like a film set. It is a former barracks, and it was quite smart and well built, and I could imagine a film being made there. It was the afternoon visit to Birkenau that really hit home. Birkenau is on a different scale and it is purpose-built: it is enormous and it is designed to kill efficientlyto kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. It is a chilling experience, and I believe that the memory of Birkenau will live with anybody who visits it.
	I remember standing on the platform by the railway track, where there is a large photograph of literally thousands of Jewish people going through the infamous separation, with a doctor holding his arm out to direct those who have to go the way that leads straight to death. There is a large shed in the background of the photograph, and after a few moments visitors realise that that shed is still there and that they are standing in exactly the place where those events happened.

Keith Simpson: I welcome the opportunity to make a short contribution to this debate. I am not Jewish. I am making this contribution as a consequence of once having been an historian. About 30 years ago, I was asked to write a book on the Waffen SS, the military wing of the SS. That involved a considerable amount of research, at the centre of which was the aim of trying to understand the racial motivation. It is frequently sidelined in many histories of the Nazi party and of Nazi Germany, but is the core element of the holocaust, which the national socialist state eventually referred to as the final solutionit meant just that. Many people suffered in the second world war at the hands of the Nazis and their collaboratornational groups such as the Poles and the Greeks; political parties, such as the communists, social democrats and Christian democrats; resisters; and members of the Special Operations Executivebut if one seriously wanted to get killed, one was Jewish. One was at the bottom of the pit. In a concentration camp someone might just have survived in any other category, but it was almost impossible for a Jewish person to do so. We saw that such camps became industrial complexes.
	Wearing my historian's hat, I want to mention four or five points that remain relevant to us today, not least as democratic politicians. The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) touched on my first point. Amazingly, we still live in an age of holocaust denial, although the evidence about what happened is overwhelming. I am talking not only about the physical remains, the contemporary sources and the war crime trials, but, not least, the scholarship. It ranges from some of the earlier scholars such as Raul Hilberg, who wrote The Destruction of the European Jews, to the more recent, outstanding and, in many ways, depressing work of Saul Friedlnder, who has managed to pull together so much. The scholarship completely and utterly refutes what has been written by people such as David Irving.
	The victims were Jews of all classes, backgrounds, ages and nationalitiesassimilated and non-assimilated. They were, on the whole, innocent people. They were killed because of their race, not because of their politics, their religion or their social behaviour. That was what absolutely and totally motivated the perpetrators. We hear a great deal about functionaries of one kind or another, but there is no doubt that Hitler and the leading Nazis believed that there was a world Jewish conspiracy. They wound up the German war effort and made that policy its centre.
	The sad thing is that without hundreds of thousands of people, not just in Germany but elsewhere in Europecivil servants, soldiers, policemen, lawyers, doctors, academics, scientists and industrialistsit could not have happened. And, on the whole, those people were not reluctant functionaries. Then there were the collaborators, the European Nazis and anti-Semites. Again, the efficient removal of Jews from many countries would not have been achieved without the highly efficient civil servants and police in Holland, Vichy France and elsewhere.
	Then we have the bystandersthe public, the neighbours, the democratic political parties, the Churches and, of course, the allies and the neutrals. I have often wondered what we would have done in the circumstances. I look at how many of us would behave at the prospect of our name appearing in the  News of the World, if it were to e-mail us threatening to put us in one of its columns [ Interruption. ] I am not making a flippant point: it was literally life and death for many Jewish people in the 1930s. If their neighbours helped them, they risked death too, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said. Many people passed by on the other side.
	Then there were the resistersindividuals and groups, from many nations and motivated by moral repugnance, neighbourly behaviour, resistance to the Nazis and courage. Many of them were ambivalent. The life of Oskar Schindler, made famous by the film, is an obvious example.
	Whom do we usually remember? We remember the victims and the perpetrators, but we politicians in a democratic Parliament should take note of the collaborators and the bystanders. There was no inevitability to the final solution and the holocaust. It was incremental, and incremental in a way that could happen again. It is not enough for good men and women to do nothing.

John Mann: I wish to pay tribute to the Smith brothers of north Nottinghamshire who have been crucial in the running and advancement of Holocaust memorial day over the years. They run the Beth Shalom holocaust centre in north Nottinghamshire, which every school, especially in the north of England, should aspire to visit as part of its educational programme.
	I also wish to pay tribute to Lord Janner of Braunstone, who chairs the Holocaust Educational Trust. Among his many other major works on the issue, he has taken on the task of marking mass graves in the Baltic states, and I have had the privilege of assisting with that recently. It is a salutary lesson in history and in current events, because not every country in Europenever mind in the worldmarks Holocaust memorial day. Indeed, not every country is involved in advances in education on the holocaust. Many choose to opt out.
	In Latvia, where mass graves are being marked and the work of Lord Janner is soon to be completed, the best-selling book this Christmas was by Andris Grutups, the co-founder of, and lawyer for, the ruling party of Latvia. He is a Member of the European Parliament and a historian. His book is an attempt to rewrite history in relation to the holocaust. His basic theory is best described as, The Jews had it coming, because they were all communists. He suggests that a balancing of history is required. Of course, Grutupswho is, let us not forget, a political leaderhas a track record. He has published books on the blood libel and on the Dreyfus case, which were also from a strange historical perspective, not unique, but which would not be shared by the vast majority of historians or, indeed, any reasonable person.
	On 22 January, in Tallinn, Estonia, five MEPs from five different countries met to launch a group called Common EuropeCommon History. It has the same themethe need for an equal evaluation of history. It is just a traditional form of prejudice, rewritten in a modern context. In essence, it is trying to equate communism and Judaism as one conspiracy and rewrite history from a nationalist point of view. Those are elected MEPs.
	I hope that the Minister and his Department will consider how we can make progress on these issues in the European Union. One good way to mark the huge success of Holocaust memorial day in Britain this year would be to convene a Council of Ministers meeting to consider anti-Semitism today in the European Union and how it should be tackled in all member states. That would begin to tease out some of the prejudices that exist.
	My final proposal is in relation to the United Nations and its infamous so-called anti-racism conference in Durban. Under the chairmanship of Libya, it is now proposed to hold a Durban II. The first conference broke up because of issues of anti-Semitism. I suggest to the Minister that he should either copy the example of the Canadians, who have already announced that they will not participate in Durban II orperhaps more constructivelysuggest that if there is to be a major UN conference on anti-racism, holocaust education should be at its core. It could then examine how all countries could participate in holocaust education and commemorating the holocaust through holocaust memorial days.

James Clappison: I shall be brief. I should declare an interest as a trustee of the Holocaust Education Trust. I hope that that will not disqualify me from paying tribute to the excellent work of its dedicated and committed staff, in particular for their work among young people. I believe that there is no better way for young people to learn about the suffering that can take place in the world than through the unique horror of the holocaust.
	I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) will not mind my saying that I found his speech very moving. He referred to the deepest degradation of the human spirit. Let us learn the lesson that that teaches us all. Let us give us full support to the Holocaust Education Trust, holocaust memorial day and every other possible way in which we can learn about that terrible horror and the lesson which it holds for us today.

Parmjit Dhanda: I know that the time available is short, and it is difficult to respond to such a moving debate. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who moved me to get involved in politics in the past, moved me in a very different way today. I congratulate him on that.
	The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) talked about his roots and his family, like many other hon. Membersnot least the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik). The hon. Member for Wycombe also mentioned the fact that there were many victims from different backgrounds. Those victims included gay people, trade unionists and, as I learned on Sunday, well over 1 million Roma Gypsies, too. That point was well made. The hon. Gentleman talked about the wider work that needs to be done, as well as the work of the all-party inquiry, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and other hon. Members have been very involved.
	A number of pieces of work are taking place across Government as part of a taskforce on anti-Semitism, including work to tackle some of the issues mentioned by the hon. Member for Wycombe about our campuses and about security in schools. We look forward to providing a positive response to the positive and good work of the all-party inquiry.
	The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) mentioned David Irving, and Nick Griffin, too. I think that he was trying to get across the point that not only should we find their views repugnant, but we should tackle the problem. It is not merely about history; it is also about what we do collectively from here on in. That is why the work of the Holocaust Education Trust and the DVD, which has won a BAFTA, will be so important for the next generation, as they will ensure that we do not lose those crucial lessons from the past.
	The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire talked about the impact that visits to Auschwitz have had on young peopleand older ones too, I dare sayin his constituency. I was lucky enough to meet a group of young people from Oldham who had visited Auschwitz and Srebrenica. They were a real mixture of Jewish, Christian and Muslim, and it was obvious that their lives had been changed forever. The opportunity to go together, as a group, has changed their perceptions of other people, cultures, religions and races. That is an immensely powerful thing.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) talked about local ceremonies in his constituency. He asked about the 1.5 million set aside for the Holocaust Educational Trust, and whether that commitment would be continued. I cannot make announcements of behalf of other Departments, but I can say that strong and effective representations have been made in the debate, and I am sure that my colleagues in the Department for Children, Schools and Families will take them into account when making decisions in the future.
	I have mentioned the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe already. He gave a very moving account of his own and his family's experiences, and also an important lesson about humility. In this House we can pass legislation on religious and racial hatred, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman was right to remind us that the law is not always enough when it comes to the extremes of humanity and people who do the most extraordinary and devastating things. We must do a lot more, and that is why this debate has celebrated the good works of the Holocaust Educational Trust and all those involved in Holocaust memorial day.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) told us about his involvement in helping to institute Holocaust memorial day. I congratulate him on being there from the beginning; I had not realised the scale of the battle that he took on when he toured the synagogues of London, and probably beyond.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) made a powerful point about bystanders. In life we can all be bystanders sometimes, but I hope that one result of the good work being done will be that in future, fewer of us will stand by when we see genocide, slaughter and ongoing destruction around the world.
	I mentioned earlier the involvement of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw in the all-party inquiry; he also talked about the contribution that Beth Shalom is making in Nottinghamshire.
	The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) described the powerful image from Sunday's event in Liverpool, when the Archbishop of Canterbury stood alongside the Chief Rabbi. I agree with him that it was also good to see the Muslim Council of Britain represented at the event. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) set out his personal interest in these matters, and he deserves our congratulations.
	The hon. Member for New Forest, East made the very good point that all religions and cultures need to be part of holocaust memorial day. So, in conclusion, let us never forget that the first person to contribute on the very first Holocaust memorial day was a Muslim who had been in a concentration camp in Bosnia.
	 It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings, the motion lapsed, without Question put, pursuant to the Temporary Standing Order (Topical debates).

David Gauke: I beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 1, line 5, at end insert 'and
	(c) in subsection (6), at end insert and may not include any increase in the upper earnings limit in excess of the increase in the retail price index, in percentage terms, for the year to September of the preceding tax year.'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 10, in page 1, line 5, at end insert 'and
	(c) after subsection (6) insert
	(7) Any regulations made under this section which increase the upper earnings limit shall be reviewed by the Treasury not later than 6 months after the date on which those regulations come into force to determine whether the upper limit, when calculated on an annualised basis, exceeds the level of earnings at which the higher rate of income tax becomes payable.
	(8) If this review so determines, the Treasury shall make regulations which set the upper earnings limit, when calculated on an annualised basis, at a level which does not exceed the level of earnings at which the higher rate of income tax becomes payable.
	(9) Any regulations made under subsection (8)
	(a) shall be made by statutory instrument which is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament, and
	(b) must be made not later than 1st January of the tax year in which they are made and have effect in respect of the following tax year.'.
	No. 9, in page 1, line 18, clause 2, at end insert 'and
	(c) in subsection (6), at end insert and may not include any increase in the upper earnings limit in excess of the increase in the retail price index, in percentage terms, for the year to September of the preceding tax year.'.
	No. 11, in page 1, line 18, at end insert 'and
	(c) after subsection (6) insert
	(7) Any regulations made under this section which increase the upper earnings limit shall be reviewed by the Treasury not later than 6 months after the date on which those regulations come into force to determine whether the upper limit, when calculated on an annualised basis, exceeds the level of earnings at which the higher rate of income tax becomes payable.
	(8) If this review so determines, the Treasury shall make regulations which set the upper earnings limit, when calculated on an annualised basis, at a level which does not exceed the level of earnings at which the higher rate of income tax becomes payable.
	(9) Any regulations made under subsection (8)
	(a) shall be made by statutory instrument which is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament, and
	(b) must be made not later than 1st January of the tax year in which they are made and have effect in respect of the following tax year.'.

David Gauke: These amendments offer alternative ways to deal with what we perceive to be a significant problem with the Bill. I shall set out in detail how they would work, but before I do so I shall put the problem in context.
	All hon. Members are aware of how important taxation is as a constitutional matter, and the House guards very jealously its right to raise revenue. In the broad historical sweep, for instance, the English civil war and the American revolution could be considered relevant to this discussion, although I shall not refer to them in detail. All parties in this House consider the proper scrutiny of revenue-raising measures to be very important.
	This country has two forms of taxation on incomeincome tax and national insuranceand it is worth taking a moment to look at the different ways in which they are dealt with in this House. Income tax was introduced as a temporary measure in 1798; it was abolished five years later and then reintroduced on a permanent basis in 1842. Partly as an historical overhang, since 1860 we have renewed income tax every year, although previously it had been renewed over groups of three or seven years on a number of occasions. However, the review of income tax is also part of Parliament's power over the Executive, as the Crown cannot raise revenue if Parliament is dissolved. Corporation tax is subject to the same restriction.
	In essence, this debate is about thresholds. Since the introduction of the Finance Act 1977, when the Rooker-Wise amendment was implemented, thresholds and personal allowances have increased in line with inflation; they do so unless Parliament expressly states otherwise. The clear intention was to prevent stealth taxation, as thresholds and allowances are both diminished by inflation. Of course, inflation in 1977 was somewhat higher than it has been for some few years now. We still have fiscal drag within a year, but not from year to year.
	Parliament retains the ability not to uprate allowances and thresholds in line with inflation. Indeed, it exercised that power as recently as 2003-04, but it must do so explicitly. It does so through a Finance Bill. This is where I would like to make a comparison with national insurance contributions. With income tax, from the point of view of the taxpayer, the concern is that thresholds will not increase in line with inflation. Our practical concern with national insurance contributions is with the upper earnings limit increasing faster than the rate of inflation. There is also a concernit is probably more theoretical than practicalthat the lower earnings level or primary threshold could fall, but at a practical level the political debate over many years has been about whether the upper earnings limit might increase more rapidly.
	The contrast between national insurance contributions and income tax is considerable in that respect, because thresholds regarding national insurance contributions are determined by regulation, as opposed to primary legislation or a formula that can be amended through such legislation. Section 1 of the Social Security Pensions Act 1975 provides a safeguard, however. The upper earnings limit cannot be increased by more than seven and a half times the lower earnings limit, or by less than six and a half times the lower earnings limit. Why? Such an arrangement prevents abrupt changes in the scope of national insurance contributions without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
	On looking at the debate on Second Reading and in Committee on that legislation, I noted that the concern expressed in Committee was that the provisions were unduly flexible and that six and a half to seven and a half was too wide a band to permit the Government to vary the national insurance contributions upper earnings limit. I also noted that representing the Opposition on that occasion in 1975 was my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who raised some important points about flexibility. It shows that things do not necessarily change as much as they might do. The concern in 1975 was that the provisions were too flexible. Clearly, Parliament was provided with an opportunity to restrict the power of the Executive to vary the upper earnings limit unduly and rapidly to increase the upper earnings limit to make a substantial increase in the tax on income that people in the United Kingdom would face.
	That brings me to one of the major problems that we have with this Bill. Clause 1(1) abolishes the ratio and the protection that means that only so much can be done by regulation.

David Gauke: I do not think that the argument for abolishing the ratio has been made; at least, it has not been advanced not terribly persuasively. I shall come in a moment to the detail of our amendments, in which we have attempted to outline alternative ways to address that concern. I am not saying that I am necessarily wedded to the idea of a ratio, but that is how Parliament's position has been protected for the past 33 years, and it may be the best way to protect it in future. We can examine other ways. My hon. Friend will recall that we considered the ratio argument in Committee.
	I understand that the Government are trying to align national insurance contribution rates and bands with those for income tax. Although I am concerned that their way of doing it is motivated principally by the aim of raising revenue, the objective of aligning the two is a perfectly respectable and honourable one to which we have no particular objection. It is fair to say that publications such as the Forsyth report were instrumental in encouraging the Government to go down that route or at least to place greater emphasis on simplification. We do not have any problem with that, so we are keen to be helpful to the Government, notwithstanding our concerns about the revenue-raising element. We are willing to help the Government achieve their objective while providing some protection for Parliament; that is the basis of the amendments that we have tabled in Committee and today.
	Various calculations were done on widening the bands. For the first time in some while, I got out my calculator and tried to work out what ratio would be needed, given that the upper point is seven and a half times what is now the primary threshold. It is a difficult sum to calculate in some respects, because one must look at future years and so on, but it is clear that if the existing ratio is breached, it will be breached by only a relatively small amount. One idea, which I think the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) proposed, was that the primary threshold could always be increased a little if the ratio would be breached only by a small margin.
	One of our proposals in Committee was to widen the bands, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) mentioned, so that eight would be the top point rather than seven and a half. Quite possibly Treasury officials have done the calculationsif so, I should be interested to hear what the Minister says about itbut I do not think that there is any doubt that a ratio of eight times the primary threshold as the maximum point would cause the Government any difficulties in achieving their stated objective. One approach would be to consider that ratio. We debated and voted on that proposal in Committee, so it could not be brought back on Report, but it is an idea to which we are sympathetic.

Peter Viggers: In a throwaway line in his Budget, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer put a tax of some 1.5 billion on middle-income families; he simply referred to a change in the upper earnings limit. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the safeguard is removed, that can only lead to the conclusion that the Government are preparing, and intending one day, to use the changes in respect of the removal of the safeguard? Perhaps they will come back with a proposal under the negative procedure, which does not require any debate on the Floor of the House. Having been bitten once, we should fear being bitten again.

David Gauke: My hon. Friend is being very helpful. That is exactly the issue. I do not particularly want to debate the rights and wrongs of abolishing the upper earnings limitnor, I suspect, is it in order to do sobut if that were to happen, or even if it were merely to be increased substantially, would the House have the opportunity to scrutinise it properly? We have such an opportunity under the existing legislative framework, but we will not if the Bill is passed in its current form. That is an important point. I stress that we object not to Parliament's ability to change the upper earnings limitof course Parliament should have the right to do thatbut to its not being able to do so by regulation, even by the affirmative procedure.
	We have set out two alternative approachesthey do not run togetherfor ensuring the scrutiny that we want. In amendment No. 8which is mirrored by amendment No. 9 because we need to change two Acts in this process, one relating to England, Scotland and Wales and one relating to Northern Irelandwe suggest that there should be no increase in the upper earnings limit in excess of the retail prices index in September of the previous year. When we tabled a similar amendment in Committee, the Financial Secretary said that the reference date for national insurance contributions is December, not September, so we have rectified that error. She also said that December was not feasible because it would cause various IT costs and so on. That was essentially her argument against the link with the RPI. This is similar to the Rooker-Wise approach whereby thresholds for income tax increase in line with the RPI for September in the previous year. If the higher rate income tax threshold rises along with inflation, based on the RPI in September, and the upper earnings limit rises along with inflation using the same measure, they should continue to go hand in hand, which would enable the Government to fulfil their objectives.
	Neither of our sets of amendments aims to prevent the Government from achieving their stated policy objective of aligning the point at which the upper earnings limit exists and the point at which one starts paying higher rate income tax. The Financial Secretary might argue that they do not quite reflect the provisions that relate to income tax and the Rooker-Wise amendment. If so, would she object to the principle of the amendments, given that her objection to the equivalent amendment in Committee was essentially that December was the wrong date and that it should be September? Now that we have rectified that problem, does she have any objections to the amendment?
	The wording of amendment No. 10 is replicated in amendment No. 11. Depending on what the Financial Secretary says, we might well press amendment No. 10 to a Division. We might press for a vote on amendment No. 8, too, but I will wait to hear what she says before reaching any conclusions.
	Amendment No. 10 is a development of an amendment that we tabled in Committee to probe the Government. At that point, we proposed to allow the upper earnings limit to be increased as long as it did not exceed the level at which higher rate income tax becomes payable.
	The Financial Secretary advanced two argumentstwo technical pointsabout why that would not work. The first was that national insurance contributions are calculated weekly whereas income tax is calculated annually. She construed our amendmentpossibly a little harshly, but I concede that there was an ambiguity in itas meaning that the relevant income tax level of, for example, 43,000 a year would be treated as a weekly limit. That was not our intention, and I believe that we have ended any ambiguity on that point.
	I concede fully the right hon. Lady's second objection, which was that national insurance contributions are determined by regulation before the beginning of a tax year. Income tax is not formally determined until the Finance Bill is enacted. Our proposal in Committee that the national insurance contribution upper earnings limit should not be raised above the point at which higher rate income tax becomes payable did not work because at the point where a regulation would have to be passed the Finance Bill would not have already gone through, even though am announcement would have been made in the Budget and there may be Budget resolutions.
	We accept that argument, which is why we have come back with a different solution. It is not the most elegant piece of drafting that has ever come before the House, but it attempts to address in good faith an entirely legitimate concern. We propose that within six months of the regulation setting the upper earnings limitin other words, six months into the financial yearthe Treasury will be required to review whether the upper earnings limit is above the level at which higher rate income tax is payable. If it is, we would then require the Treasury to bring forward regulations to reduce the upper earnings limit below the higher rate of income tax as existed at that time for the following year.
	That proposal would cause considerable inconvenience to the Treasury, and I make no apologies for that. The purpose of the amendment is to provide a deterrent to prevent any Government from activating the mischief to which I referred earlier. A Government would be able to raise the upper earnings limit through primary legislation, but if the limit were increased by regulation higher than the Government said that they intended, they would have to go through the embarrassment of producing a further order stating that they were wrong and that the upper earnings limit would be brought down the following year.

David Gauke: I accept that a review takes place. However, amendments Nos. 10 and 11 deal with circumstances in which a Government raise the upper earnings limit with intent, not accidentally. One can imagine a meeting in the Treasury around this time of year in which the view is expressed. We need to raise a bit more revenuehow are we going do it? Someone then comes up with the bright idea of increasing the upper earnings limit. An investigation takes place to ascertain how that can be achieved and what is to prevent it from being done through regulation.
	Until now, the ratio to which I referred earlier prevented that, but, in future, that protection will not exist. Someone could therefore say, Let's bung up the upper earnings limit from 43,000 to 50,000 or 60,000 and we'll get the extra revenue. If the amendments were accepted, and Ministers and officials considered that proposal, another bright spark in the Treasurywhere there are many bright sparkswould say, Hold on. We'll have to go through the review in early October and introduce a further regulation, which means that, next year, the upper earnings limit will be reduced. That would be an uncomfortable experience.
	The amendments would be effective if an error or a misalignment by a small amount occurred, but they apply mainly in the case of a brazen breach of a commitment made by Government. As I have said, they would not be binding for ever, but they would cause some inconvenience that should dissuade a Government from taking a path that hon. Members of all parties do not believe any Government should follow. That is the essence of our case. I stress again that it would not prevent the upper earnings limit from being changed, but it stops that happening by regulation and inadequately.
	Let us make a comparison with income tax, which is similar to national insurance contributions. We know from the evidence-taking session that the Government have no proposals to merge them. We all acknowledge that there are great similarities between them, but a comparison of the parliamentary scrutiny that both get shows that national insurance contributions already get substantially less consideration. That will be reinforced if the Bill is passed in its current form. Our amendments attempt to rectify the problem to some extent and without jeopardising the Government's stated objectives.
	We offer two alternative routes. Unless some mechanism is put in placerestoration of the ratio or either of the two amendmentsthe Bill will be dangerous and leave our taxation system open to abuse from a Government, whether the current one or a future Administration. We will therefore press one of the amendments to a Division, depending on the Financial Secretary's comments.

David Gauke: My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have been rather consensual this afternoon, as we were in Committee, when discussing areas of disagreement between us and the Government, but some of the debate on Second Reading was slightly more feisty, and the accusation was made that the Conservatives, in raising concerns, were on the side of the wealthy. Actually, as my hon. Friend points out, the people who will lose out as a consequence of both the package as a whole and the measures dealing with national insurance contributions are those who earn about 39,000 to 40,000 a year. That is certainly what the Institute for Fiscal Studies concluded. So we are talking about police officersthey are not receiving a full pay increase as it issenior nurses and teachers, not the very wealthy. It is middle England, to some extent, that will suffer as a consequence of the increase.
	I want to make it clear that we do not object to aligning national insurance contributions with higher rate income tax. The idea seems sensible, and I made the point earlier that debate on the matter has been led by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), the shadow Chancellor. The Forsyth report, which advocated something similar, has been influential, but those proposals were based on the use of fiscally neutral measures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) made clear, the measures in the Bill are not fiscally neutral. They are intended to raise more tax revenue, which we know the Government need to do. I shall not stray too far into yesterday's Institute for Fiscal Studies report, which showed that there is an 8 billion black hole in the Government's finances, and that taxes will need to increase to ensure that the Prime Minister's fiscal rules are met; the point is that the measures are primarily a tax increase, and not one that will be paid by the wealthy. Looking more broadly at the Budget 2007 packageI shall not dwell on this pointwe see that it is the low earners who make up the majority of those who will lose out.
	We know that 5 million households will lose as a consequence of the measures. I do not think that we ever got an answer to the question asked at a Committee evidence session about how many of those 5 million households would be in the 39,000 to 40,000 income range. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary has an answer, but it would be interesting to know how many households within that band will lose out. Of course, it is the way in which national insurance contributions are being aligned with higher rate income tax that will cause that loss.
	The second element of the Bill is the separation of the upper accruals point from the upper earnings limit. We all speak of the consensus on all sides about the Turner package of pensions reform, and there is a fundamental consensus on the thrust of what we need to do. The reason why we have expressed concern about what the Government propose in the Bill is not because of any abandonment of the consensus, as was alleged on Second Reading. We believe that there should be a restoration of the earnings link to pensions, and have advocated that idea for some time. We have also accepted the principle of separating the upper earnings limit from the upper accruals point as part of a packageas part of a set of proposals that would enable us to finance the restoration of the earnings link.
	However, what we see in the Bill is the breaking up of that package, and we are legislating now on separating the upper accruals point from the upper earnings limit at least four years before the implementation of the restoration of that link. That will not happen until 2012, the date that the Government are working on. The Financial Secretary reiterated in Committee that it remains the intention and expectation of the Government that the link will be restored in 2012. The caveat on which the former Chancellor, now the Prime Minister, insisted was that the Government could not restore the link unless economic conditions allowed.
	Given the green Budget produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, one must seriously question whether those economic conditions will permit that in 2012. If not, it could be another seven years before the link is restored, yet we will already be paying the costpeople will be paying contributions to a contributory system, and their contributions will count for nothing. Those will no longer be contributions, but tax payments.
	The Pensions Policy Institute raised the issue following the 2007 Budget when national insurance contributions were increased by the increase in the upper earnings limit, and made it clear that as a consequence, unless something was done, the flat-rating would be delayed until 2035. On Second Reading and in Committee we explored in some detail whether the Treasury was fully aware that that would happen. We were told explicitly that the Treasury was aware. In the Red Book showing the financial implications of every policy announced in the Budget, the additional costs of the increase in the upper earnings limitin other words, the additional rebates that would be paid to funds for those who had opted out of the second state pensionwere scored.
	That being the case, it is surprising that the Treasury, which with the left hand had identified that there was an issue, had not done more with the right hand to address it. It was conceded by the Treasury officialswhom I take this opportunity to thank for their clear evidence and their help to the Committeethat the Red Book made no explicit reference to the problem. We know that the Treasury was aware of it, yet no proposals were made at the time of the 2007 Budget. One cannot help concluding that the 2007 Budget package was somewhat rushed, and that not all the implications were appreciated or, if they were, not all the necessary mitigating steps were taken to address those consequences. That Budget looks increasingly flawed

David Gauke: I take your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	I move swiftly on to our essential concern about that second element of the Bill. A number of peoplenot the very wealthywill be paying more in contributions but not receiving the benefit, because they will reach the upper accruals point. We have asked one question throughout. The Government's explanation is that we need to ensure that we revert to 2030-31 as the point at which flat-rating comes in. What has never been satisfactorily explained is why that 2030-31 date is so important. I appreciate that it was part of the original Turner package, but that was based on the assumption that the national insurance contributions upper earnings limit was not going to be increased as it subsequently was. Why was 2030-31 so sacrosanct that it had to be maintained?
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), who is detained on important constituency business today, raised that very question in Committee. The Minister answered that it would have led to higher earnings receiving a greater than intended benefit for the state second pension. That is absolutely right, but those higher earners, as she describes them, were contributing more in national insurance contributions than had been anticipated. Why should they not also receive additional benefits? I hope that that point will be explored further in another place.
	The Bill will raise additional revenue from national insurance contributions. It will weaken Parliament's ability to scrutinise further tax increases in this area, and it means thatin a manner not anticipated by the Turner report and the consensus that arose from itpeople will pay more in national insurance contributions but not receive additional benefits as a consequence. For those reasons we remain concerned that the Bill is flawed, and we will oppose Third Reading.

Jeremy Browne: I shall give way to any Member who has taken an interest in the Bill for the past few hours; otherwise, I shall make progress.
	A criticism that can be made of the Government in respect of the past 11 years or so is that a lot of additional complication has been added into the system; if some of that is now being reversed, that is welcome. I suppose I can boil our criticisms down to four succinct points. First, the simplification has come with a large sleight of hand; as has been pointed out, the Bill is part of a process that enables the Government to raise something in the order of 1.5 billion of additional revenue.
	The situation was fairly anomalous before, when the marginal rate of tax being paid by people earning in the region of 38,000 or 39,000 was considerably higher than that paid by those earning in the region of 28,000 or 29,000. That dip in the graph in that income area could have been seen by many on lower incomes as being unfair on them if they took the view, as I do, that national insurance contributions are, to all intents and purposes, income tax under a different guise. I understand the argument that they are not the same because they are calculated and levied on a different basis. However, many people looking at their payslips at the end of the month will find it anomalous that some people on higher incomes pay lower marginal rates than some of those on lower incomes. I understand the logic of that aspect of the changes, but had the simplification been revenue-neutral, it would have been more widely welcomed than this measure, which combines it with a large additional tax take.
	Our second objection is that abandoning the multiplier of 7.5 per cent., which Members who have been consistently interested in the Bill have discussed at length, represents a loss of discipline. It is always easier to loosen one's belt than to regulate one's diet. The Government would have better advised, having raised the level of tax take beyond what would have been considered conceivable by Chancellors prior to this Government's coming to office, to look more often at how they can maintain and impose greater discipline on themselves instead of looking at ways to raise the tax take further.
	My third point has been discussed at length by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke)the ability of this House to scrutinise changes that may take place in future. We share the concerns that Conservative Members have expressed in that regard. Even if one takes the view that the current Government are benign and benevolent in all their intentionscertainly, most people take that view of the Financial Secretary, if not of the Governmentone can see that it is nevertheless desirable that safeguards should be put in place to prevent future abuses. I think that most people would agree that those safeguards are now less onerous than would otherwise have been the case.
	My fourth point is about part 2, which we have not discussed at such length. As the Conservative spokesman said, as regards the state pension we are getting the pain at least four years before we get the gain. He did not say, of course, because Conservatives never do, that the need to reconnect the link with earnings and price increases has come about because the Conservative party broke it in the first place. Passing over that for the time being, it remains the case that these provisions are being coupled together in the minds of the public, yet we cannot expect the state pension to have that link restored until 2012 at the earliest. My party does not think that the provisions in the Bill are sufficient for pensioners, particularly poorer pensioners and women pensioners.
	The Bill is not the most controversial measure, principally because it is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Those who object to the Chancellor's Budget and to the Government's overall tax policy, and have rushed into the Chamber to make those objections, have good reasons to do so in many cases, and those are legitimate debates. However, the Bill is about enabling these changes to take place, and that is a separate argument from whether the changes have merit in themselves. I have plenty of views about the merits of the Government's policies and their last Budget. I also have reservations about aspects of the Bill that I feel less strongly about. The Bill is not particularly controversial, but it does have limitations that give us cause for concern; that is why we will not support it.

Peter Viggers: I do not look forward to the Bill reaching the statute book. It is a nasty little measure. The Exchequer Secretary described it as a technical measure and, although it is short, it is complicated. A website on the subject begins: Prepare to be baffled. It says that the state second pension is the most ridiculously complicated benefit on the face of the planet.
	Prepare to be baffled is the correct term, as is Prepare to be taxed. The Bill will especially disadvantage those who earn between 37,000 and 43,000. As has been said, the overall measures in the Budget, including the Bill, will involve raising a tax of some 1.5 billion and creating 5.3 million losers. The Financial Secretary has pointed out that 3.5 million of those losers will lose less than 3 a week, but it follows that 1.8 million people will lose more than 3 a week.
	Hon. Members will remember the French statesman Talleyrand, who was widely believed to be incapable to telling the truth. He was extremely devious and everyone tried to work out a second motive for everything that he did. When he died in 1838, Metternich is reported to have said, I wonder what he meant by that. I felt that way when I listened for more than 10 years to the Budgets of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, now the Prime Minister.
	Let me quote from the Budget speech of 21 March 2007. The then Chancellor said that he was
	creating a tax system for income that has just two rates and two thresholds.
	He also said that he was creating a system
	to reward work, to ensure working families are better off and to make the tax system fairer.[ Official Report, 21 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 827-8.]
	First, he said the basic rate of tax would be cut by 2 percentage points from 22 to 20 per cent. and the 10 per cent. starting rate of income tax on earnings would be abolished from 2008-09. Consequently, income tax and earnings would be charged at two ratesthe basic rate of tax at 20 per cent. and the higher rate at 40 per cent.

Tobias Ellwood: I pay tribute to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers). He was right to point out the larger context in which we should place the Bill, and the errors that we have found creeping into the last Budget that we have been faced with. It is important to put in context the consequences of the Bill to the person in the high street and the people in our constituency. These consequences must be placed into the context of council taxes, increased fuel bills and so forth. This is not a tax-neutral measure, as the Government would have us believe. They might be able to convince the Labour Members that it is, using the figures in the Red Book, but the middle-income earners who will be hit by it will end up out of pocket.
	We strongly support the idea of tax simplification. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport pointed out, we have a very complicated tax system, and it behoves us all to try to simplify it. There is a consequence to the Bill, however; it is the price tag that is associated with it. That is why the Conservatives will not support it on Third Reading.
	If we were to ask any of our constituents exactly what national insurance contributions were, I doubt that they would be able to give us a proper definition. Some might say that they were supposed to link in with the original desire to protect against unemployment, or that they had some connection with the health service. Others might say that they had a link with pensions. The system is now so confusing, with all its smoke and mirrors, that it is seen simply as another stealth tax. It is a confusing tax that is used to raise more funds for the Government.
	As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke), the impacts of the proposals will be twofold. The first will involve the changes to the upper earnings limit. This has come about because of the curious gap that has emerged between national insurance contributions and the higher rate of income tax. Simplification of the tax system is, of course, important, but we see this as a clever way of introducing a stealth tax that will give the Government a revenue increase of about 1.5 billion, which will be taken directly from middle-income earners. It has been estimated that that will affect about 5 million households across the UK, involving people who earn between 39,000 and 40,000 a year.

David Gauke: Does my hon. Friend share my curiosity about a question that we pursued in Committee? We asked how many of the 5 million households that will lose out as a consequence of the Budget would be in that 39,000 to 40,000 range, and how many would be in lower range, involving people earning under 18,000 a year. I do not think that we have yet had an answer to that question.

Tobias Ellwood: Once again, Madam Deputy Speaker, I appreciate your clarification, but as I pointed out earlier, it is the Red Book that misleads us by ignoring some of the other factors that affect our constituents.
	The second aspect of the Bill is its impact on pensions, particularly in respect of the upper earnings accruals point, about which my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire spoke at length earlier. The House will be pleased to know that I will not go into any further detail at this stage. [Hon. Members: Hear, hear.] I am pleased to hear that confirmation. Suffice it to say that the consequence of this second aspect of the Bill is an effective raid on the rebates of the second state pension to the tune of about 400 million. That is not an insignificant amount of money for a Government who say that they want to help those groups of people.
	In conclusion, let me say that the consequence of simplifying the tax system comes with a price taga price tag of 1.5 billion.

Paul Beresford: Perhaps I should reassure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I do not intend to use the opportunity to speak until 6.30 pm.
	I thank the Minister for attending this debate. I anticipated that a Minister from another Department would attend, because I am raising this issue on the basis of a new clause that I tried to propose to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill on Report. It was chopped when it ran out of time under our favourite procedurethe guillotine. I therefore hoped that a Minister from the Ministry of Justice would respond today, but I welcome this Minister because he understands the problem. In a funny way, we have worked on the same sorts of campaign on various causes. We have been on the same side in trying to protect children from paedophiles.
	I have been working quietly, but I hope with some effect, on this matter for perhaps a decade. I want to touch on something that is developing into a problem as technology moves forward. It is well known that paedophiles take and collect child abuse photos. The photos used to be in the form of hard copiestaken by box Brownies and so onbut things moved on to videos and now to digital. Such images are now kept on computers, CD-ROM, DVDs and other form of digital storage. Digital is used as an opportunity to download informationpictures and so onfrom websites. Paedophiles swap their pictures over the internet, and take their own photos. Many such images are acquired by the website groups that these individuals join to produce new photographs. One must remember that every single photograph is of a child being abused, and there are millions of these photographs.
	Several things have changed over recent years. First, demand has increased, and that includes the demand of these individuals for new material. I understand from talking to the police that the other thing that has changed is the level of the photographs' depravitythe depths being plumbed are getting lower and lower. Every so many weeks the police will say, I have never seen anything as bad as this. When TV programmes talk about protecting children, they mean teenage children, but demand is increasing for younger and younger children, even down to infants and babies.
	The point that I want to emphasise tonight is the introduction of encryption. I have discussed the issue with police experts and even with the national technical assistance centreNTACwhose job is to act on behalf of the police and the security forces to break encryption. I understand from one of NTAC's directors that the proportion of child abuse material that has been encrypted is increasing. One of the points made is that as the demand on NTAC is increasing, its budget seems to be decreasingbut then one would expect the head of such a department to say that.
	Encryption used to be difficult, but over the past few years it has been possible to download 128 and then 256-bit encryption freely on the net. What is making the situation worse is the fact that the previously complicated procedures required are becoming simpler. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that the new Windows Vista Professional contains a system that means that the moment one turns one's computer off, everything on it is encrypted. So, if the police are to have any hope of getting much data from these computers, CD-ROMs and so on, they must get their hands on the computers when they are still running. Otherwise, they are sent off to NTAC to try to break the code.
	The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 gave us some hope. It introduced a penalty of two years' imprisonment for failure to provide the key. Sadly, the relevant part of the Act has only just been enacted, and I am aware of that because I was so concerned that I helped with the consultation. With a bit of encouragement from meto put it mildlythe consultation included a suggestion that a higher penalty should be imposed when the failure to provide the key to encrypted material concerned child abuse material. I enjoined some of the officials at a meeting to try to help to persuade concerned representatives from the City who, on understanding the point that I was making, accepted it.
	On Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, I raised my idea as a possibility, and I received a written response. In essence, it said, Wait and see, we want to see how the change is working. Well, it is not working, and it is blindingly obvious why it is not working. The police can say to offenders, If you do not produce the key, you could go to prison for up to two years. But most of the material being hidden would put offenders away for five years or more and put them on the sex offenders list. It is an obvious choice to make, and they do not produce the key.
	I shall give the Minister a current example. An individual is going to court next month. He was arrested in mid-2006. He and a colleague were going to go to France, and they had written out a plan of how they would attack, grab, seduce or abuse French children. Fortunately, for French and English children, the man and his colleague were caught. The police went to the man's home and found some abuse files, not many, but his computer contained another 150GB of encrypted material. I asked a friend of mine who works at IBM what that would mean if the files were all single photographs taken by a straightforward camera of the sort that many of these people use. He said that it could be as many as 750,000 single photographs. I was staggered, but my police colleagues said that it was not unusual.
	In this particular case, the need is more urgent. This individual has babysat a little girl, aged three. The police know, from a physical examination, that the girl has been abused. By a process of elimination, the individual is almost certainly the abuser. The little girl will be no use in court as a witness. The only way to catch him would be to break the code on the 150GB of material. He has been approached with the warning about two years, and it would be excessively polite to render his response as No. He would rather serve two years and not reveal the data. The police want the data, partly because of the three-year-old girl, but also because if there are other children's faces in there, they might be able to find them and help them.
	I then decided to propose the new clause. It is straightforward, and would increase the penalty from two years to five years. The new penalty would apply in any one of three circumstances. First, it would apply if the offender had been convicted of an offence under the Protection of Children Act 1978 or the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Secondly, it would apply if the offender's computer or a similar source of data was being examined and it was apparent that it contained at least some images of the abuse of a child. Thirdly, it would apply if the court was satisfied, according to the civil standard, that the protected data were likely to include an indecent photograph of a childI shall not go through all the details of that. We did not reach my new clause during our discussions in this place, but I have received the agreement of those on my Front Bench that it will be tabled in another place when the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill reaches the appropriate stage of its consideration.
	I want the penalty to be increased to five years. In fact, even though such an aspiration is probably unrealistic, I want it to be increased to 10 years. Men and women who do such things to children need to be put away out of the reach of children for as long as possible. I do not know the legal ramifications, but such cases often come up when the individual appears before a court for other child abuse problems. On conviction, it would be very nice if the penalty in such cases was consecutive and not concurrent.
	I ask the Minister not to give us 15 minutes of soothing words, for all our sakes. I expect him to be sympathetic, because I know him and I know his attitude. I want my new clause to be passed on to the Secretary of State for Justice, either so that he can back it and explain the need for it or so that an equivalent amendment can be introduced in the Government's name.
	In the past, amendments that I have proposed have been refused in this House but have gone through in another place in a slightly different form and in the Government's name. I do not mind that, because I want an increased battery of legal equipment to deal with paedophiles.

Vernon Coaker: I begin by extending to the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) my genuine thanks for the way in which he conducts himself with regard to these matters. I have had ministerial responsibility for this area for just over 18 months, and in that time he has worked very hard to bring various issues and facts to my attention. That has contributed greatly to the work that we are trying to do, and I am extremely grateful to him.
	The hon. Gentleman is also a member of the Home Secretary's taskforce and I know that he is highly regarded, both in the House and outside it, for the very valuable work that he does. He is committed and dedicated, in both a professional senseif that is the correct expressionand in a personal sense, and I compliment him on that. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has also made a significant contribution to our work on these matters, and I am grateful to him for attending this debate.
	At the outset, I should like to put various matters on record. Those of us attending the debate know the background to it, but we must remember that people outside the House read our proceedings too. Therefore, as well as responding to the questions that have been raised, it is important to lay out for them the processes that we have gone through.
	At this stage, though, I should like to extend to the hon. Member for Mole Valley, and any other hon. Member who is interested, an invitation to a meeting at which we can discuss some of the issues in more detail. A debate like this is important as a way to set out all the relevant information in cases such as the one that we are considering this evening, but hon. Members of all parties have a common interest in finding a way forward. We are all disgusted by the images that we know are accessed by paedophiles; we all want to protect children and to do as much as possible to prosecute paedophiles and bring them to justice. If we can learn from each other and discuss our common goals, we will be able to make progress.
	I hope that my offer is helpful, and if the hon. Member for Mole Valley is agreeable I shall ask my office to set to work putting a meeting together. In addition, if he is aware of other people, over and above the ones that I would suggest, whom he would like to invite, I should be very happy to consider including them in the invitation.
	The Government have encouraged the growth of access to the internet, and firmly believe that the facilities available on it, from research information to online shopping, have helped to enhance the lives of our citizens. We are also keen to encourage the development of security on the internet, and to give our citizens the tools to ensure that any information that they send by that means remains secure.
	However, the Government recognise that the internet and associated technologies are used for unlawfuland sometimes frankly disgustingpurposes. The same information security technologies that provide security and confidentiality for legitimate business and financial transactions can be misused to secure and conceal images of children being sexually abused, so as to evade detection and prosecution.
	Nine years ago, in a report on law enforcement and encryption from the Cabinet Office performance and innovation unit, the Government acknowledged that the misuse of security tools was a potential threat. Following that report, the Government established in 2000 the National Technical Assistance Centre to provide law enforcement with a national resource for the complex processing of lawfully obtained protected electronic information.
	Over seven years, NTAC has built up considerable expertise, which it has made available to law enforcement investigators. Complementing the development of NTAC, the Government provided resources to police forces to enable them to appoint and train dedicated forensic computing analysts and investigators who are better able to understand and identify digital evidence. In that regard, I agree with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that some people display a kind of evil genius when it comes to hiding what they do and that, as a result, law enforcement officers must have the same level of expertise. I know of the quality and standard of the people who work at NTAC. Their ability is astonishing.
	Similarly, I have visited the Serious Organised Crime Agency high-tech unit that deals with e-crime and seen the work that it does to break some of the computer codes, if that is the right way of putting it. It is astonishing. In this cyber-world, this internet world, this virtual world, it is about trying to develop that capacity. It may not involve a police officer, but we all need to look at the ability to develop law enforcement capacity to deal with that.
	Together, those individuals, both in police forces and in NTAC, are contributing to the delivery of results in making protected information intelligible. I know that the hon. Member for Mole Valley will understand why it would not be appropriate for me to disclose or even to imply exactly what capabilities either NTAC or our police forces have, what they can do and what they cannot do. As far as those individuals who seek to use information technology to conceal evidence of their crimes are concerned, we should, necessarily, do as much as we can to leave them guessing.
	Adding to the capabilities of law enforcement, the Government, as the hon. Gentleman said, have enabled part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Part 3 provides for the imposition of disclosure requirements on individuals to require disclosure of lawfully obtained protected information in an intelligible form, or to require disclosure of the means to access protected information or to make it intelligible, such as a key or a pass phrase.
	Parliament decided in 2000 that a penalty for failing to disclose information when required to do so should attract a maximum of two years' imprisonment. In the Terrorism Act 2006, Parliament agreed that, where the disclosure requirement was necessary in the interests of national security, it was appropriate that the maximum penalty should be five years' imprisonment. However, when the House debated the provisions of RIPA in 2000, the anticipation was that most individuals would routinely be encrypting data within four years. I am told that that did not happen. It is not necessarily happening in all cases yet.
	For the individual who wants to manage their own information security, rather than rely on professional help, many encryption products have remained awkward and cumbersome to use properly. Because of those difficulties, initially, the market take-up was limited. Correspondingly it was rare for investigators to come across suspects using encryption, whether properly or not. However, as the hon. Members for Mole Valley and for East Worthing and Shoreham have pointed out, the market has addressed those issues. There is a growing availability of easier-to-use encryption products. As the hon. Member for Mole Valley pointed out, that includes the advent of encryption products as integrated security features in standard operating systems aimed at home and small business users. That mass market adoption means, almost inevitably, that the use of information security technology by criminals to facilitate and conceal evidence of their unlawful conduct, so as to evade detection or prosecution, will increase.
	That is why the Government decided last year that the time had come to implement part 3 of RIPA. We undertook a consultation exercise on a code of practice for it, in which we explained that part 3 was not designed to undermine the security of financial institutions or the business of information security providers, or to criminalise people with bad memories who forget the passwords to their protected data. The same consultation also invited comments on amending section 53 of RIPA to extend the penalty for failing to comply with a disclosure requirement in cases related to offences involving indecent images of children.
	Only some respondents addressed that issue. Most respondents focused on the detail of the code of practice. There was support for amending section 53 and there were responses urging the Government to implement the provisions first and consider any evidence for amending them in the light of experience.
	The Government understand, and have always understood, the concern, clearly and frequently articulated by the hon. Gentleman, that a child sex abuser guilty of storing images of abuse, which they were responsible for creating or distributing, might refuse to comply with a disclosure requirement under part 3 of RIPA and readily accept a maximum two-year penalty, rather than comply with the requirement, disclose the images and render themselves liable to a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment. I understand the point made by the hon. Members for Mole Valley and for East Worthing and Shoreham. I remain sympathetic to their concern, but before making any amendments, we want to assess how the provisions operate in practice. That is now taking place: the first disclosure notices are being prepared and served, and the first prosecutions for refusing to comply with a notice are being taken forward. However, before any prosecution takes place under existing penalties, complex issues of how to present evidence and explain how encryption technologies work will have to be addressed in court.
	The Government will consider amending the maximum penalty in criminal cases if there is evidence that the two-year penalty is not effective in cases that involve or are believed to involve indecent images of children. Such an amendment might include measures whereby a person guilty of failing to comply with a disclosure requirement would be liable to a term of imprisonment of more than two years if they had a previous conviction for an offence under section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978 or section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, or if the relevant protected information was contained in or with media containing indecent images.
	To sum up where we are at the moment, we need to look at evidence gathered from prosecutors, police and others about what has happened since the relevant part of RIPA was introduced, so that we can determine how effective it has been. The hon. Member for Mole Valley and I have worked closely on these matters, and like him, I want to do all that I can to protect the children of this country from those who would abuse them. The three-year-old that he mentioned requires the protection of the state and of the legislation for which we in Parliament are responsible. If we have a meeting to bring the relevant people together, we can discuss how to consider the legislation more effectively to see whether it requires amendment, and how best to take the issue forward. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is welcome to consider how he might be involved, because the protection of our children from paedophiles on the internet is not an issue that should divide us.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at seventeen minutes past Five o'clock.